Which Airports Have the Fastest Wi-Fi?

If you’re reading this post while waiting for your departure from Seattle, chances are it loaded quickly. That’s because Seattle-Tacoma International has the fastest airport Wi-Fi in the country, according to a new study by Speedtest.

“Seattle has now taken the crown of fastest airport Wi-Fi in North America from Denver, a strong contender that had held the title for two years running,” the study said. “Seattle’s also faster than our other global winners from last year including Gold Coast Airport in Australia, Congonhas-São Paulo Airport in Brazil, Dubai International, [and] Seoul Incheon International Airport in South Korea,” among others.

Here are the top 10 airports with the fastest Wi-Fi in North America:

1. Seattle
2. Denver
3. Calgary
4. Atlanta
5. San Francisco
6. Philadelphia
7. Vancouver
8. Boston
9. Orlando
10. New York (LaGuardia)

The five airports with the slowest Wi-Fi are Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis, Toronto (Pearson), and Montreal.

Picking Up Speed

Many airports also showed dramatic improvements in Wi-Fi speed over the past year. Atlanta clocked in with a pitiful download speed of 2.68 mbps (megabytes per second) in the 2017 survey. Forget streaming video and music, that’s barely fast enough for basic browsing. This year, however, download speeds increased to a robust 59.62 mbps.

Plenty of other airports improved their performance as well, signaling that airports realize how much travelers value this service. Seattle more than doubled its speed, as did Orlando and LaGuardia. Performance declined year-over-year at Detroit, Vancouver, Miami, and Dallas-Ft. Worth.

All data is based on Speedtest results from January through April 2018 on free Wi-Fi at each airport.

Readers, how important is airport Wi-Fi? Do you typically use the airport’s network while you’re at the gate?

More from SmarterTravel:

• Which Airlines Offer the Best In-Flight Wi-Fi?
• These 20 Countries Have the Fastest Wi-Fi Speeds
• Bad Wi-Fi a No-Go for Tourist Destinations